Something about this rubs me the wrong way. It reminds me of the first homework assignment I did for CS in college. My solution was correct, but was marked do

Something about this rubs me the wrong way. It reminds me of the first homework assignment I did for CS in college. My solution was correct, but was marked down for using an O(n^2) algorithm instead of O(n). Nothing in the original assignment said anything about a requirement to use the most efficient algorithm. If the question is "how do the Capulets and Montagues get along," the answer "they don't like each other" is not partially right, it is right. It is not detailed or sophisticated, but the question didn't ask for detail or sophistication. If we're going to call an answer "partially right" because it misses some nuance that could be explored in greater depth, than we could play that game all day long with anything that has ever been written. For example let's take your answer: > The correct is that the value of 5 in 582 is 500, and an even better answer would be "the value of 5 in 582 is 500 because the 5 is in the hundreds place. Ok let's play this game. "Partially correct," I say. "First of all, the fact that a 'hundreds place' exists at all is thanks to the relatively recent invention of Arabic numerals around 500 A.D. and its innovation of a numeral for zero, which previous number systems such as Roman numerals lacked. Secondly, the reason the third digit represents hundreds is because we use base 10 numbers by convention, which likely traces back to our hands and their 10 fingers. Other bases are used in different contexts, most notably hexidecimal in software engineering, in which case the '5' would be in the 256's place, representing 1280. Thirdly, the convention of writing digits is most-to-least significant order appears arbitrary -- it is hard to argue that it is linked to the order of text directionality, since the same order is used in both left-to-right (eg. Latin) and right-to-left (eg. Arabic) writing systems." Solid B+ answer though. Don't worry, I have faith in your ability to produce a truly correct answer someday.